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by sonshineandshowers



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Cancer, Comfort, Death, Gen, Minor Character Death, Pre-Series, Sad, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22577692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonshineandshowers/pseuds/sonshineandshowers
Summary: He’d hop the train and go back every weekend, getting in late Friday night and leaving Sunday afternoon. Leaving the city he had always tried to escape, yet now never wanted to abandon. The next week returning to a woman he never wanted to leave.Malcolm visits Jackie and Gil every weekend as she battles an extended illness.
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright, Gil Arroyo/Jackie Arroyo, Jackie Arroyo & Malcolm Bright
Comments: 13
Kudos: 70





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**Author's Note:**

> i had started this and not touched it for a while until chat last weekend on discord about how jackie died. so this is for the discord fam who inspired finishing it.
> 
> this is a sad af topic. it's about helping each other; still sad af.

He couldn’t get enough time away from Quantico.

He’d hop the train and go back every weekend, getting in late Friday night and leaving Sunday afternoon. Leaving the city he had always tried to escape, yet now never wanted to abandon. The next week returning to a woman he never wanted to leave. Hours on the train chilling from more than the January air.

He watched her contract from the fall to the holiday, the dropping temperatures shrinking her into a shell of her former self. Every weekend she was thinner, skin sagging away from her bones. Her hugs carried a pointed reminder that one day her grip would fall and she’d be gone.

Her long, thick hair dwindled to a fuzzy crown. Folks brought her scarves and hats, yet she was usually content without them. “I’m still the queen of this house.” But her throne fell too, a new mechanized chair in its place to help her get up and down.

Her energy waned from adventures, drives, and walks to being unable to stand for long periods of time. Rides in the Le Mans went from uncomfortable to excruciating to failing to get into the car. He’d call her a more suitable one, but the whole ordeal left her falling more tired than she could manage to enjoy going out.

They feared the only place left to fall was the ground.

But she didn’t. Fridays brought late night drinks with Gil in the den. Had they heard any new news from the doctor? Was there anything he could do for Jackie? Chattering about case details until he’d warm to the question: was there anything he could do for him? Getting the same response of “No, kid,” and a hand to the back of his neck. Helpless to do anything beyond be there.

Saturdays, Jackie talked Malcolm through making crumble, using up the leftover apples, he reminding her he thought he had the recipe down by now. She reminding him she was still the cook of the house. She critiquing his work with a taste to the tongue, yet couldn’t join him eating it. Stitching a blanket while he sat beside her, spouting updates of Virginia in between spoons into his mouth. 

Sundays brought Jackie sleeping in from the exertion. Gil trying to convince Malcolm to take a break, maybe not come the next weekend. But when she woke, Malcolm ended the visit with "See you next week," an afternoon hug, and fear he’d rip her paper-thin skin.

Fear that the next time he came home would be the end.

* * *

Impassive stares out windows on the train gave Malcolm pernicious alone time with his thoughts. The city skyline disappeared into the Meadowlands, pulling him under.

He didn’t get to do the things he wanted to: sit with her during chemo, make sure she got home okay, make her food her stomach could take.

He didn’t get to quit the Bureau. He could move back, he could be there every day, he could…but Jackie said no, he wouldn’t trade his life to watch hers fade. Gil said no, it had taken him everything to get out of New York, get into the FBI - he shouldn’t come back for them. Why had he listened? He was selfish to have listened.

They had done _everything_ for him. Why couldn’t he bring himself to do the same in return?

He chose not to do the things he wanted to. And he got to live with them.

* * *

Malcolm knew the cancer ravaged her insides, but he didn’t know it could move on and conquer her outsides. Dissatisfied with the territory left to conquer within her chest, it breached her ribcage and boiled to a seeping ulcer Gil was helping her dress. Thick fingers smoothed cream around the edges, a different ointment slicked with a depressor over the top, all the while inspecting her brow, the corner of her lips for any signs of pain. Any signs that no, he couldn't do this, no, they should talk about a round-the-clock nurse again, no - all he wanted to do was follow her wishes. She didn't have much, but she had them. And she had him.

Malcolm got caught with his eyes widened. Gil directed his gaze toward the other room, and Malcolm fled the intimate moment.

Normally when he arrived, Jackie was already sleeping in bed. Today when Gil finished, she stayed in the mechanized chair to rest. Gil discarded the wad of spent gauze and wrappers and washed his hands, finding Malcolm in the den. “Kid, let me talk to you,” he sat next to him on the couch, hand gripping the back of his neck.

“It’s not going to get better,” Malcolm said to his knees. Like the realization was finally coming to him when they’d known all along.

Gil swallowed. “No.”

He raised his eyes to Gil's, his voice thick with, “I’m _so_ sorry.”

Gil couldn't stop tears leaking from the corner of his eye, and Malcolm hugged him, his arms sharing all the words he didn't know to say. “Me too, kid. Me too," Gil said into his shoulder.

They'd stayed huddled like he and Jackie did when Malcolm had had a night terror, taking an extended time to part. Malcolm's cheeks were washed with tears, his burning eyes unable to meet the equally red ones beside him. “How long?”

Gil wiped his face with his sleeve, slid his fingers across his eyes. “They say a week, maybe two.”

“I need to come home.”

* * *

Malcolm made crumble alone. The kitchen sagged with the loss of instructions and tips, Jackie’s critique of the finished dish. “It’s wonderful, dear,” she had said, not having the opportunity to taste. She was breathless talking longer than a sentence, and she spent most of her time at rest.

Her hug was a little bit bonier, talons piercing into his memory. "I'll see you next week," he shared, kissing the top of her head like she had when he was a child. Her frail hand squeezed his.

“See you next week,” he said, giving Gil a hug instead of a pat on the back when he walked him out.

* * *

He’d told them his stepmother was dying, he needed the week. A white lie to get back to his second mother. “Whitly, you don’t have a stepmother,” they’d barked. And he’d just gone.

Back on the train to New York. Back in a cab to Gil’s. Back up the stairs through the door.

Everything looked the same - rack waiting to take his coat, photo of him with Jackie and Gil on the counter, den calling to prepare a drink for Gil, soft living room lamp lighting Gil's spot beside the mechanized chair. But it was empty. Jackie was _gone_.

There wasn't space to sit beside him, no straightforward way to give him a hug. He wasn't sure Gil saw him anyway, his stare locked through the mechanized chair, tears wandering down his face. Malcolm dropped beside him and wrapped his arms around his calf. "I'm so sorry," he managed to get out before fusing his head to Gil's knee. His chest ached for the woman missing in the room, his sobs stumbling to the floor.

He didn't know how long it was before Gil's fingers were in his hair. "Why don't you get us our drinks, kid?" he suggested, his voice carrying a weight he couldn't swallow. Malcolm complied, extricating himself from the uncomfortable floor.

All Gil could see was Jackie folded into the seam of the mechanized chair. Hear rattling breaths that struggled with the most basic exchange of air. Murmurs of moans signaling he needed to press another tablet under her tongue. The ghost of her form as they had wheeled her out the door.

Malcolm handed him a tumbler of whiskey. "Could you put some of her music on or something?"

The soft picking of acoustic guitar started through the speakers. Malcolm didn't know where to sit, didn't know what to say, didn't know what to _do_ -

"Could you make some of her crumble?" Gil didn't want to eat it, he just wanted to smell it. Smell _her_.

"Okay."

* * *

It was the next day before Gil could move. He made it as far as the bathroom and a chair in the kitchen. His hand rested over his eyes, reading a list from the back of his lids. "I need to call the funeral home, the church, the lawyer, the -"

"I can help," Malcolm offered, sipping his coffee. He had spent the whole night sitting on the living room floor with Gil listening to Jackie's playlist on repeat. His cricks had cricks.

"She picked everything already - there's nothing left to do. Just gotta...call." For as simple as he made the task seem, his eyes still carried a haze of confusion, and his hands didn't move to pick up his cellphone in front of him.

"I can call," Malcolm reiterated.

"Okay. I don't want any people here," his voice gathered a firmness. He looked over at the mechanized chair. "And I want that gone."

"Okay."

* * *

Not wanting people at the apartment didn't mean they didn't send food. Didn't mean they didn't send cards and flowers. Didn't mean they didn't call.

"I don't want to see any of it." They were foreign smells and symbols she was... Gil took a deep breath and retreated to the bedroom, door jumping closed behind him. Waves of anguish shook the apartment.

Malcolm called Ainsley to take the food to a local shelter. Packed the flowers for a second trip to a nursing home. Stacked all of the cards into a box for when Gil might be up to reading them, if the day would ever come. Retrieved Jackie's chair from storage, returning her throne to the living room.

Malcolm wrapped himself in Jackie's handmade blanket on the den couch and waited for Gil to come out. He cried in silence, yearning for the woman who stitched them together.

* * *

The stretch of advancing to the kitchen and recoiling to the bedroom happened many times over the next days. A card slipped through in the pile of mail. Malcolm failed to hide a fruit basket fast enough. There was a meltdown when Gil had to go outside.

Outside because he needed to go to her wake. Outside because he needed to go to her funeral. Outside where everyone would look at him with solemn eyes because his wife had died. His wife had died. _Jackie_ had _died_.

"Gil, we need to go," Malcolm spoke from the door.

Gil wrung his hands, his eyes confused, time lost in a hyperspace he couldn't snap out of.

Malcolm found his suit in the closet, taking out the shirt and putting the rest on the bed beside him. "Can you put this on?" he asked, handing Gil the button-down.

Piece by piece, Malcolm put together Gil for the wake. A bit of gel and his fingers through his hair gave him the finishing touch to pass as presentable. Malcolm grabbed his keys, and together, they went outside.

"Give me those." Gil grabbed the keys back from him. No way Mr. Destruction was driving his ride.

* * *

Gil didn't let Malcolm stay long after Jackie's funeral. Needed and was eternally grateful for every moment he had been there, yet didn't want to interrupt any more of his life. "I'm good, kid," he said with a pat on his neck.

And put him on a train back.

* * *

The rack took his coat. The photo of him with Gil and Jackie smiled from the counter. Jackie's handmade blanket was still on the back of the den couch. Jackie's chair under the soft lamp in the living room.

And they were both there, in the den sipping whiskey, talking about how nice it was that Malcolm had moved back to New York. That his kid was home. And could he make crumble - he'd been craving some.

* * *

_fin_


End file.
